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The Saturday Special airs every Saturday at 3pm on Ideas Network stations and web streams.

This special hour allows us to bring you interesting, unusual and often provocative programs selected from stations and producers from around the world. Some programs are just a single hour, while others present a short series of related programs.

November 21st, 2009

Teen Poetry Slam

Recorded live, hear highlights from the Wisconsin Teen Poetry Slam Finals held in April at the University of Wisconsin Union Theater. Sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Initiatives, the Slam features Wisconsin's brightest young poets competing for a spot at the International Teen Poetry Slam in Chicago.

Language Advisory: This program contains some strong language and content regarding sexuality and violence. Listener discretion is advised.

Here are links to video of Team Wisconsin performances at Brave New Voices, the 2009 International Teen Poetry Slam last summer in Chicago.

Radio Lab

October 3rd - November 14th, 2009

Radio Lab

October 3rd - “Stochasticity”
When “lighting strikes twice,” is it fate or just chance? The desire to see patterns in randomness is a basic facet of human experience. Radio Lab tries to make sense of the patterns we see, from the basketball lucky streak known as ‘hot hand’ to why a Parkinson’s patient turned into a gambling addict.

October 10th – "Special Edition"
The producers of Radio Lab present selected excerpts of stories from the Best-of-the-Best of the series. Hear such favorites as "Goat On A Cow," "Detective Stories," "Where Am I?" and "The Beauty of Fireflies."

October 17th - “After life”
Inevitably, everything dies: humans, civilizations, even the universe. But then what? Radio Lab stares down the very moment of passing, and then speculates about what may lay beyond. It’s an hour of queries, investigation and dreams, after the mortal coil has been shuffled off.

October 24th - “Parasites”
Some creature, unbeknownst to you, living deep inside you has the ability to secretly control your behavior. The “puppeteer within” may sound like the plot to a horror film, but it’s a lot more common than you might think. Radio Lab uncovers a world full of parasites…and examines claims that some may actually be good for you.

October 31st - “War Of The Worlds”
A deep look into one of the most controversial moments in broadcast history... Orson Welles' 1938 radio play WAR OF THE WORLDS. Martians invading New Jersey.... Why did it fool people then...? And why has it continued to fool people since...? An examination of the power of mass media to create panic.

November 7th - “Numbers”
They’re all around us, but are they really there? And what do the really mean? For those of us who are bad at math, here’s a Radio Lab that ponders if we could live in a world without numbers.

November 14st - “New Normal”
Organisms change, and the result is evolution. This hour, Radio Lab tells stories of adaptation...for foxes, a small town in Oregon, and one particular troop of baboons in the Western Serengeti...that may have you thinking differently about war, violence and human nature.

September 26th, 2009

For almost a century, Muncie, Indiana has been known as "Middletown," the quintessential American community. But now, as the rust-belt city grapples with deepening recession, many residents are losing their hold on the middle class. Think of them as the brittle class, just one fragile rung above poverty on the economic ladder.

September 19th, 2009

President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure. So did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.

September 12th, 2009

The "American dream" has powered the hopes and aspirations of Americans for generations. It began as a plain but revolutionary notion: each person has the right to pursue happiness, and the freedom to strive for a better life through hard work and fair ambition. But over time, this dream has come to represent a set of expectations about owning things and making money. So what exactly is the American dream? How did we come to define it? And is it changing?

September 5th, 2009

A good boss is something all employees hope for, but they can be surprisingly hard to find. Radio Netherlands Worldwide takes us to Italy to meet a truly "enlightened" boss. And we meet the only woman labour leader in Iraq to talk about her job, and workers rights in the country.

Visit Radio Netherlands Worldwide here.

August 1st - 29th, 2009

The Moth Radio Hour

The Moth Radio Hour is old-fashioned storytelling on modern topics.
Each episode presents a selection of the very best stories from The Moth, which has been staging live storytelling shows since 1997.

The Moth Radio Hour features true stories told live on-stage without scripts, notes, props, or accompaniment. Each Moth Radio Hour mixes humorous, heartbreaking, and poignant tales that captivate, surprise, and delight audiences with their honesty, bravery, and humor.

Learn more about The Moth here.

August 1

August 8

August 15

August 22

August 29

July 25th 2009

Bridging the Shores:

The Hmong-American Experience

An encore broadcast from Wisconsin Public Radio, the program explores the issues of identity, preservation, adaptability, and perseverance that many Hmong-Americans grapple with in a continually-evolving culture.

Forced to flee their native Laos due to Communist persecution resulting from their serving as allies to U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, thousands of Hmong began arriving in the U.S. in the late 1970s. The immigrants have since struggled to adapt to American customs, yet retain their traditions.

For more information, click here, or visit the companion website at www.wiipps.org.

Click here to listen to the program which premiered September 12, 2008.

This documentary is also be available via the audio streaming and archive services on this website (www.wpr.org).

June 20th ~ July 18th 2009

Five Farms: Stories from American Farm Families

The series tracks five farm families from around the nation for a one-year cycle of the seasons. It's about families who make their living tilling the soil, planting seeds and caring for livestock, working to produce food for American tables.

"Five Farms" follows these families in their orchards, fields and barns to reveal the challenges and rewards that keep them working the land. The series was produced by Wesley Horner Productions in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

Saturday, June 20th
Spring planting on the family farm is the time of the annual gamble - on the alchemies of nature, the health of livestock, on future fall harvest market prices.

"Planting" introduces five families who are among the one-percent of Americans who live and work on farms: the Griffieon family of Iowa; the Pecusas of Hopi, Arizona; the Mains of northern California; the Wise family of North Carolina; and the Hagers, western Massachusetts dairy farmers.

Saturday, June 27th
Early summer is a time of long days on the family farm, perfect for nurturing crops and animals as they approach the peak of growing season.

"Nurturing" illuminates the daily work of farming through the parents and children in each farm family. It also reveals the distinctive challenges and joys of raising a family - and growing up - in farm country.

Saturday, July 4th
"Stewardship" focuses on the daily choices farming families make to preserve their land, water and air - the fundamentals of farming.

During mid-summer visits to a Massachusetts milking barn, an Iowa soybean field, an apricot orchard in California, a hog farm in North Carolina and a desert corn field in Arizona, five families describe and demonstrate what sustainability means on their farms.

Saturday, July 11th
Autumn is harvest time. That means Iowa corn and soybeans; fruit dried in the California sun; greens, beans, and potatoes; slaughtered hogs and beef trucked to market. It also means Thanksgiving turkeys.

"Harvest" follows the families to the grain elevator, the farmers market and, in a welcome break from work, the State Fair. It's the time of summing up after the long growing season, - the time to decide whether the gamble of early spring planting season has paid off.

Saturday, July 18th
For each of the families of "Five Farms," the question looms large: Who will take over the farm?

"Succession" features the next generation - the young people in each farm family. Who will continue to farm, who won't, and why? Some have gone away to college or to explore work off the farm, and have returned with new ideas and new energy. Others leave farming for good. The program also explores community connections that are part of rural life.

Saturday, June 13th - "Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters"
This program asks the question "Why are inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge so seductive?"

Saturday, June 6th - "Diagnosis"
Humans intuition and creativity still lead the way both in discovering that nature of a problem, and in dealing with the resulting knowledge.

Saturday, May 30th - "Race"
When the human genome was first fully mapped in 2000, Bill Clinton, Craig Venter, and Francis Collins took the stage and pronounced that "The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis."

Saturday, May 23rd - "Sperm"
Why so many sperm? We ponder the necessity of males in a world where sperm can be frozen and kept for all eternity.

Saturday, May 16th - "Choice"
We turn up the volume on the voices in our heads and try to make sense of the babble, as we ponder how we get through the million choices and decisions we make every day.